The most famous suspended game in Mets history, from July 13, 1977, occurred the night Con Edison had the poor sense to stick one of its substations in the path of a lightning strike. That contest took two months to complete. The Mets trailed the Cubs, 2-1, as Lenny Randle came to bat in well-lighted (if not particularly clean) Shea Stadium. An instant later, the ballpark and the city were enveloped in a pitch-blackout, which Randle — not without logic born of prevailing evidence — mistook for the Big General Manager in the Sky “calling me”. A 1977 Met should have only escaped yet another defeat so easily. The Mets picked up their game with the Cubs two months later and lost it, 5-2, though Lenny Randle lived to bat .304 on the season.

And on May 24, 2013? Jeremy Hefner made his one big mistake early by way of a monster two-out, two-run home run to Freddie Freeman in the first. Then he settled down as you kind of knew he would in that Hefner may be the only pitcher on Earth who could enter his ninth start of the season with an ERA of 5.00 and be described as “hard luck”. Either everything goes terribly wrong for Hefner or barely a thing goes wrong, but, oh, when that solitary thing goes wrong, it lands on a porch far from home plate and we’re compelled to start every sentence regarding the upstanding Oklahoman with “Jeremy Hefner deserved better, but…”

Hefner gave up those two runs and nothing else for six innings, long enough for the Mets to mount a surprise attack on Kris Medlen. That is to say they scored three runs in six innings despite a) being the Mets and b) ceding the seven-spot in their batting order to Ike Davis and thus effectively playing a game of eight-on-nine versus Atlanta. Davis struck out four times for what is known in baseball circles as “the golden sombrero”. Interestingly, manufacturers of golden sombreros refer to a very productive day at the factory as “an Ike Davis”. Among the eight hitters who surrounded the offensively comatose Davis (now carrying a .143 average so light that he won’t be charged a baggage fee on his impending flight to Vegas) during that Medlen kid’s stay on the mound, Lucas Duda had the good sense to loop a ball in the general direction of Uptonia Parkway in the first, where gloves are not permitted in the fast lane; John Buck hit a home run clear to April in the fourth; and Marlon Byrd exhibited veteran leadership by veteraningly leading a liner to center in the fifth.

Terry Collins decided the 3-2 lead Hefner handled through six was best passed along to LaTroy Hawkins because Collins obviously bet on the Braves and was damned if he wasn’t going to cash in. Hawkins rather predictably gave up a leadoff homer to Dan Uggla in the seventh. How could that not happen when Collins theatrically or perhaps valiantly threw himself on the grenade of Hefner’s 0-5 record after Jeremy threw 94 pitches and looked as solid as Sadecki out there? The Mets were 0-8 in Hefner’s starts, which trumps good ol’ Jeremy’s statistical shortfall. Harvey’s Cy Young monitoring aside, who cares what a pitcher’s won-lost record is? One more inning out of Hefner might have brought the Mets one inning closer to victory.

Or one more inning out of Hefner might have brought a black cat traipsing across the infield. And another blackout. And Ed Kranepool exiting prematurely from wherever Ed Kranepool was enjoying his Friday night. To be fair to the manager, something is always going to go wrong for Mr. Hard Luck. Friday it was LaTroy Hawkins.

So the Mets went to the bottom of the seventh, tied 3-3, with Hefner no-decisioned and laser-hot Daniel Murphy making his way on base yet again via shortstop’s error…and making his way off base via baserunner’s aggressiveness. When Daniel morphs into Marvelous Murph, getting himself thrown out at second by the proverbial country mile, it’s a bad sign. When the next two batters reach via walk and HBP but are stranded by Duda and Byrd, it’s a worse sign. When Scott Rice and Greg Burke collaborate on a bases-loading situation that sets up another heartwarming chapter in the life and times of Evan Gattis, and the Mets fall behind, 5-3 in the top of the eighth, you figure the Mets had had their moments and they blew them all.

But the Mets and Braves on a Friday night, fireworks or no fireworks (and there were to be no fireworks on this sparsely attended Fireworks Night), can be interesting. They were interesting a few Friday nights ago at Turner Field. They were interesting at Shea in 2000, when 8-1, Braves, became 11-8, Mets, in the blink of an eighth. There was even a Friday night in Atlanta in godforsaken 2003 that ended with Tsuyoshi Shinjo enlivening his otherwise depressing second Met go-round by gunning down Chipper Jones — remember that guy? — at the plate to ensure a 6-5 Met victory that Armando Benitez seemed determined to let unravel into a 7-6 loss.

Thus, it was interesting that with the Mets spiritually down a ton in the bottom of the eighth at Citi Field, they were really only two runs in arrears. And despite the ghostly presence of Ike Davis striking out with a runner on first, the Mets got two on and Jordany Valdespin up, and Valdespin worked the kind of at-bat against Anthony Varvaro that, if it were Tejada or Murphy doing it, would present cause to praise the Hudgens Approach to deep counts, except it was Valdespin, so Collins probably sent word to Fredi Gonzalez to drill the cocky punk bastard (you know, for his own good). Anyway, Jordany got it to 3-and-2 and didn’t offend any of the veteran leaders or anything. I had a really good feeling about this.

But then Valdespin struck out on Varvaro’s eighth pitch, which indicated it was going to be another lost opportunity in another lost season in another lost era…except Murphy was up again and he scalded a ball to center to score Buck from second. And because for the Braves, Uptonia Parkway runs through left and center, Tejada — who had just broken out of his own mostly obscured Ikeness with a single — was able to go from first to third with the potential tying run. Maybe B.J. Upton would have fielded Murphy’s hit cleanly had everything not been getting drenched, but like his brother Justin, he plays Uptonian defense, so probably not.

Rick Ankiel, so incongruously a member of this team that he appears to have been Photoshopped into his Mets uniform, was up next, though his role was to play wet bystander as Varvaro slipped a soaked baseball past Brian McCann. Tejada bolted in from third. McCann’s throw to Varvaro covering the plate beat Ruben, but it also bypassed his pitcher. Tejada was safe and our sopping Friday night affair was knotted at five.

Ankiel struck out, the tarp spread out, Gary and Ron gave way to that horrible SNY sports highlights show and, after I nodded off, I learned the game was put on hold. It is to be resumed before the Fox game tonight, though that seems to assume an awful lot about the Mets and Braves resolving their preliminary issues in plenty of time for 25% of the nation to see what it’s nominally tuning in for.

Oh, like we care about inconveniencing Fox.

Still, the suspended game’s juxtaposition alongside what used to be known as the Game of the Week seems appropriate. This is network television, where May means the TV season is ending and prime time programming endeavors to hold your attention until fall with cliffhangers — or “cliffdwellers,” as Wes Westrum called close contests back in the days when tie games would be put in the books as such and played all over again as if they had never happened (save for the individual stats). On October 2, 1965, the Mets and Phillies took a Saturday night Shea nightcap to 18 innings at 0-0 before the municipal curfew law kicked in. Rather than being suspended, the game was considered forever deadlocked, one of eight official ties the Mets played between 1962 and 1981. The season ended the next day, though not before the two going-nowhere-but-home teams were forced to plow through yet another doubleheader (which the 50-112 Mets lost). They don’t have curfews on ballgames anymore and they almost never call ties. Hence, we find ourselves smack in the midst of an old-fashioned cliffdweller.

Will Jeremy Hefner finally technically participate in a Mets win?

Which Met reliever will be discombobulated by having to “start” a game already in progress?

How will Dillon Gee be affected by having his routine interrupted in advance of the regularly scheduled game?

During which inevitable losing streak will Terry Collins blame “that suspended game with the Braves” for upsetting the Mets’ finely honed equilibrium?

Do they make sombreros in platinum?

Who’s Anthony Recker and will we find out why Kevin Burkhardt was interviewing him?

Is it going to rain again?

And, most importantly, what about me, dammit? The Mets sent me a postcard offering me two free tickets for a non-Subway Series game in May, which was bureaucratic hell to actually turn into two free tickets. The tickets are for tonight. If I show up and see the end of a Mets loss, do I have to enter it in my Log? Can I take credit for the win? Will my wife endure this mini-doubleheader she’s suddenly signed onto? Will we stick around for ad hoc Fireworks Night?

Then there’s the matter of some recurring oral pain — not the kind thousands inflict on Ike Davis when he strikes out, but the kind for which I have oral surgery scheduled Tuesday (a.k.a. Worst Harvey Day Ever). During the rain delay, hoo-boy, did I have a flareup, the kind of episode where you find yourself thinking, “No bleeping way I’m going tomorrow night.” Then it subsided. Will it arise again? Will it be worse? How could it possibly be worse? If my pain was a baseball player, it would be Ike Davis, for crissake.

Steve D
September 19th, 2012 at 5:29 pm
For the record, I have been anti-Ike all year. I thought his approach at the plate was horrible and he made little effort to change it until he was hitting .180 in July. He finally did try to change some stuff, but still is the 3rd worst OBP in the NL. That being said, it makes it tougher to trade him when these rumors come out. I hope it is not someone in the organization being that dumb.
Lenny65
September 19th, 2012 at 8:18 pm
I guess “patience” is only for ultra-high priced FA busts and not 25 year old power-hitting first basemen. Seriously, unless the trade was just too good to pass up, dumping Ike would be a bad, bad move IMO.

Steve D
September 19th, 2012 at 9:41 pm
He’s hitting .180 at home. If he stays and does that again next year, he’ll be untradeable.

Lenny65
September 20th, 2012 at 1:10 am
Well, that’s true I suppose. Sometimes heart beats logic and I think a lot of us just WANT Ike to pan out for us badly enough that we’re blind to the reality of it, which is that he’s becoming a better-fielding (and more personable) version of Dave Kingman. One-eighty, huh? Jeez. And here I thought he’d be the new Rico Brogna.
Jacobs27
September 20th, 2012 at 6:35 pm
If they do trade Ike, I’d like it to be about those things, not about some off-field tabloidy nonsense. At the same time, the .180 at home could be a fluke. If you were feeling optimistic about Ike you could say, on the flip-side, he’s got a .889 OPS on the road, where he’s even played slightly more games. Or you could say he’s batting a respectable .256/.345/.517 in the second-half. If he does that for all of next year, whatever his home-road splits, he’ll be plenty trade-able (and keep-able, too!). People might even expect him to do better away from Citifield–a plus to his trade value. The point is: there’s no reason to think any one of those current splits projects Ike’s “real talent” level any more than the others. So, you have to be careful about the splits you pick, they can be misleading.

Steve D
September 20th, 2012 at 10:36 pm
I totally agree…I base my opinion on watching him swing and I think he does not have a good swing and has not adjusted.

Jacobs27
September 22nd, 2012 at 9:25 am
Yeah, it’s definitely a concern… In other bad news, what I can’t figure out is how Wright seemed to have such a good swing in the first-half and has somehow mal-adjusted it in the second-half. His numbers are bad, but the way he looks, more often than not, is even more disturbing.

I remember the Shinjo game in 2003 being perhaps the only time Ted Robinson called a moment like a broadcaster, instead of his usual “uh, I guess I’m calling a baseball game!” style.

Good luck out there tonight with everything. Maybe the game goes to the 14th and you’ll feel good about adding an official game to your log. Maybe the Mets record 3 outs and the Braves give up a homer to lose, all while you’re watching on TV in one of Citi Field’s many wonderful Modern Amenity Clubs (though with this forecast, who’d blame you) and you’d feel good about NOT including it in your log. It’s a unique experience, I hope it’s fun.

Wow, I would not have come up with Ted Robinson as the announcer there. It was such a mixed bag of voices during that period. And, yes, you nailed his style.

The Log Committee has ruled the suspended game (pending rain, teeth and what have you) shall be Logged, with appropriate annotation, based on the principle that if the Logger sees one pitch of a game live, it’s Loggable.

“eight-on-nine”? Try six on nine. Between Ike’s 1 for 40-whatever and Tejada’s 4 for 40-whatever, it’s like the bottom third of the order doesn’t even exist. Except when Harvey or Marcum pitch, because each has a higher BA than Ike.

What’s up with these Kevin Burkhardt interludes?
I start shaking my tv and shouting, “where’s the game, where’s the game?”.
Once with John Franco we missed three batters.
Doesn’t SNY know we don’t want to miss Ike flailing at another offspeed pitch?
HELP!!

Yep, I still believed in Ike last year. I genuinely though he’d turn things around and emerge as a much-needed “slugger” type. Guess they should have tried to trade him while they had the chance. Now they’d be lucky to get one of those on-deck circle bat weights for the poor guy. His current season has to rank up there with all-time Mets worsts, it’s an atrocity.

No joke, there’s no future anywhere for a first baseman who’s hitting at sub-dollar-fifty levels. I hope he can somehow cure whatever ails him, it’s tough watching the kid struggle like this. There’s plenty of other things wrong with these 2013 Mets and I hate to continually bag on poor Ike but yikes, it’s really, really ugly. I can’t recall the last time a Met regular came out of the chute this poorly (although it MUST have happened at some point). Hopefully he’s salavagable because it’d be a shame otherwise.

[…] near this game on either of its two days. My entrée to this affair came eight innings in via the unorthodox suspension of hostilities and my acceptance of the Mets’ poorly executed offer of “two free tickets” to a home game in […]

[…] every last bit of it (save perhaps for the last bits of it). This wasn’t Colorado in the cold or Flushing in the rain with suspension of hostilities looming or the joy of Marlins Park fifteen innings after dark. This was a beautiful day on the heels of a […]

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